Steve Harvey and his wife Marjorie cover the February issue of “Essence” and the successful TV talk show host gave a few pointers of what keeps them together.
According to Essence:
He said, “Everything I have,” he says and points to his wife of seven years, “is because of this girl right here.”
It was love at first sight for Harvey, as he watched Marjorie walk into the Memphis comedy club he was playing, and he let his feelings be known right then and there. He stood onstage and announced to her, “I don’t know who you are but I’m going to marry you.” Marjorie’s moment of clarity came a few weeks later. “I knew he was The One shortly after I started dated him…but then he just left. Disappeared.”
This was in 1990. Like most relationships, their love story is not without its obstacles. Harvey wasn’t in a good place yet financially and needed to work on his career. “Before a man can be of use to a woman…he’s got to know who he is, what he does and how much he’s going to make.” The two reconnected in 2005. His second marriage just ended, as did his six-year run as star of the sitcom The Steve Harvey Show, and it was a whole new ballgame. Two years later—17 years after his powerful onstage prediction that he’d one day marry her—and the two were wed.
But everything wasn’t always smiles for the couple. He admitted that he thought she was going to leave him after a $20 million tax debt surfaced.
“The first thing the Harveys had to do together was face the IRS. According to Steve, no sooner had they been married than he learned his accountant had died, leaving seven years’ worth of Steve’s tax returns unfiled. Tax payment checks made out by Steve were attached to the returns, but had not been mailed out, evidently, for years…the same year the Harveys vowed to stay together “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,” Steve Harvey was hit with a staggering $20 million tax bill…‘No one has ever even heard this story,’ he says quietly. His confidants at the time all advised him not to tell Marjorie. ‘She’ll leave you,’ they said. ‘This is the happiest we’ve ever seen you,’ they had told him after he married Marjorie, ‘but nobody is going to stick around with this kind of mess.’ Of course, Steve told her. ‘I said, ‘If this woman leaves me over this, I will be the most surprised man on planet Earth.’ “ Marjorie stayed…”
Steve Harvey Shares His Personal Love Story & What Almost Ruined His Marriage was originally published on tlcnaptown.com
